US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1483

On May 23 2019 05:57 NewSunshine wrote:

I mean, xDaunt literally said "Democrats are making a big mistake doubling down on this investigation nonsense." Your posts are going hand in hand. Not every claim people make needs to be contentious, or a debate to be had. Sometimes people just call something what it is and it doesn't need to be argued.

Report redactions

That leaves us with the only ground cited by the Democrats for contempt, which is Barr refusing to release the unredacted report. Senate Democrats attacked him at his at his confirmation hearing for refusing to guarantee public release of the report without redactions. As a witness, I testified that they were asking Barr to commit to a potential criminal act to secure his own confirmation. The report inevitably would contain some grand jury material, which under the law is information that cannot be publicly released without a court order. It is a crime to unveil such information.

Barr promised to release as much of the report as possible, and he has delivered. Indeed, he is not expressly given the authority to release the confidential report. Yet, he not only released it but declared executive privilege waived on its content. The key obstruction portion of the report is virtually unredacted. Just 8 percent of the public report was redacted, largely to remove material that could undermine ongoing investigations. The sealed version of the report given to Congress only had 2 percent redacted. Democrats are therefore seeking a contempt sanction on a report that is 98 percent disclosed and only lacks grand jury material.

Barr restricted access to the 98 percent disclosed report, as opposed to the 92 percent public report, due to the inclusion of evidence impacting ongoing prosecutions. He has offered to expand the number of members and staff to review that material but insists on it remaining protected. But this has nothing to do with the redactions. It is the 2 percent solution to a major political dilemma of the left. Faced with a report that rejected the collusion theories of their running narrative, Democrats want to focus on those 2 percent of redactions rather than over 400 pages of findings.

So Congress now will ask a court to find civil contempt for Barr refusing to release grand jury information. The District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals recently rejected a district court claim to have the “inherent supervisory authority” to disclose grand jury matters because of great public interest. To make matters worse, the Justice Department has now said the president has invoked executive privilege over the entire report, making this contempt claim even less likely to prevail over the long run.

Democrats are launching the weakest possible contempt claim against the administration in a civil action with a long track through the courts. In the end, there is utter contempt in this action, but not in the case of Barr.

On May 23 2019 13:41 GreenHorizons wrote:


Am I going to have to be the one to point out there isn't a question mark in this entire post?

On May 23 2019 06:36 Danglars wrote:

Apparently, you can quote another’s posts to prove the claim. Good to know.

I think it’s wise to find a quote of mine if you’re actually wanting to ask me some question in light of former posts. This is just laziness on your part.